


Just A Jump To The Left

by MeeshMoosh



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF OFC, Explicit Language, Language Barrier, Modern Girl in Middle Earth, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Insert (Sort of), Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2019-11-06 08:51:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17936660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeeshMoosh/pseuds/MeeshMoosh
Summary: Yet another Modern Woman in Middle Earth fic!~Follow Toni, a middle aged woman who has zero patience for finding herself removed from her busy life and deposited in Middle Earth, as she stomps her way through the events she had been brought in to change. Nobody even bothered to ask her if she wanted to. The nerve!Once she figures out what in the heck they're saying, she'll be giving them an earful.





	1. Journal Entry One

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will be written in my normal format (third person) with the occasional insertions of first person Journal entries from our heroine.

_Journal Entry One - Where the hell am I, and who can I phone to complain about shitty bus service?_

My name is Toni. I am thirty six years old, the proud holder of a year long bus pass because my nineteen ninety eight Ford Mustang decided that it no longer wanted to function. Ever again. 

Well, at least I WAS the proud owner of a Ford Mustang, and a holder of a bus pass, because at the moment, I have no idea where in the hell I am. 

One moment I was stepping off the bus from the train on third street station downtown, frowning at my phone as my credit card company pinged a security alert, absentmindedly squeezing past the other passengers to get out, the next I was pitched face first down a damned steep embankment, and into a thin pool filled with frogs, rotten cat tails, and my pure unadulterated anger.

The sky is blue without a single cloud, it seems to be a balmy twenty degrees celsius, and sure as fuck isn't winter like about twenty minutes ago.

My pea green puffy jacket is far too hot, and my worn sneakers are covered in whatever the hell was rotting at the bottom of the pool. Jeggings are shit when they're wet. I fell over three times trying to climb out of this pond. I couldn't see a single building when I'd gotten to the top of the damned mountain I'd rolled down. 

Rolling green hills, lots of trees, bird song, warm sun.

I hate this place already.


	2. Idyllic Peace and Kidney Punches

A few more hours sitting about in the silence and peace of birds chirping, soft wind, and sun, and Toni is rethinking her hatred of this place. Confusion, definitely. Sheer annoyance at not being where she should be when she has shit she needs to deal with, extra definitely. 

But hatred? Eh, hard to hate idyllic peace. 

Sighing, Toni leans back on her hands. The grass is cool, tickling the backs of her ankles where she sits, long legs stretched out in the sun, sitting atop a tall hill in the literal middle of nowhere.

Toni had spent the better part of an hour doing circuits of the area, looking to see if she could find anything that might denote civilization in the slightest and coming up with buttkiss. Nothing. 

She couldn’t even find a track, or a road. No walking paths aside from a single deer trail that leads into a heavy thicket of bramble and cool leaves. 

Not where she wants to be. Ticks, no thank you.

Thus, she sits, basking in the sun, the contents of her backpack strewn across the grass after she’d taken stock of what she has.

Extra thick journal notebook bound in leather she’d planned on using for her next part time course in Anthropology. Tampons. Four pens with chewed ends. A myriad amount of random receipts, all hopelessly smeared by the last time she’d had a water bottle leak inside it. Six bags of tea, still in their packaging. A long sleeve shirt from work. A neck warmer she’d purchased a week ago, because hello, winter. Her keys on a lanyard. A half dead phone. Her credit cards, debit card, social security, bus pass. Two mints. And the clothing she is currently dressed in; jeggings, a bright pink t-shirt covered in tiny blue parrots, bra, undies, white socks and ancient running shoes that have seen better days. 

That is the saddest inventory of things that she’d ever seen, particularly in an emergency situation. Like now. Sure, it's warm and bright out, but what happens at night? Are there wolves here? Bears? Are any of the trees big enough for her to hide in? How would she stop herself from falling off the damned branch?

Hazel eyes survey her surroundings as her hands idly start to tightly roll her winter jacket into a sausage shape, before shoving it to the bottom of her bag and reloading everything back in on top of it. 

“I’m a thirty six year old woman. I have two bachelor’s degrees. I’m a retired decathlete. Is there some reason these facts are important enough to kidnap me to some bizarre land of rolling hills and beautiful weather?” She asks to no one in particular, her eyes latching onto a rather bouncy blade of grass, before staring up at the beautiful blue sky.

A long moment passes, and she sighs, “No response, huh? Didn’t think so.”

She’d held out hope that staying here might result in an explanation, a reversal, a sign...anything. Unless getting her ass wet from the dew inside the thick grass is a sign, Toni thinks she is completely out of luck. At least for now.

A soft grunt escapes her as the tall woman rolls to her knees and stands, casually slinging the backpack on with a smooth movement. She quickly checks the ground to see if she's left anything before starting down the other side of the hill, towards one of the larger, MUCH less dense thickets she’d spotted prior. 

“Alright, well...sitting here is doing shit all. Lets see who the hell is responsible for this so I can punch them in the kidneys.”

At this point, it seems as good a choice as any. Better than sitting here.


	3. When I Said Don't Touch Me, I Wasn't Kidding

Down the hill and into the trees she goes, ducking her head under a low branch, grateful for the fact that she’d braided back her long hair, the pale brown liberally sunstreaked from a summer in the field. The last thing she needs right now is to get tangled or end up tearing out a chunk. She’d had enough of that in her teens on various camping trips or hikes. Ah, her adventurous youth.

It takes almost three hours, or as near as Toni can tell, since her phone bit the big one an hour into her little voyage, before she finds what is clearly a road. A rather wide one, at that. Not paved, or anything along that line, but it has clearly seen traffic. Maybe wagon wheels, given how narrow and deep the ruts are. The hoof prints are pretty distinct as well. 

Toni glances up from where she’d been frowning, half crouched next to the dirt lane, stilling as the faint sound of voices trickles into her ears. 

Oop. Fuck, retreat. A little twist of anxiety sends her bolting into the trees at the side of the road, half clambering up a friendly looking oak before hunching down, and turning back towards the lane.

It isn’t long before the owners of said voices come into view. Men, six of them. Dressed like they’re going to a Renn fair. 

Middle of nowhere, surrounded by Larpers. Oh goody gumdrops.

A soft huff of annoyance bursts from her lips as she stares, shaking her head at her own idiocy and hopping down from the tree. Larpers. She’d been worried by larpers. 

Shoving her braid over her shoulder, she stalks towards the road, calling out loudly, “Hey, guys, can you give me a hand here?”

Startled yells in a language she does NOT understand are her answers, and before startled eyes, all six men reel back, a flurry of swords being drawn. 

Instantly, her hands come up, “Hey, hey calm down. What the fuck? I just need help.”

Suspicious faces with narrowed eyes meet her words, and she realizes as she gets closer, these guys don’t look...like normal larpers. The cloth is ragged, dirty, and shades of brown. Its wrinkled and stained. Their skin is rough, their teeth brown and broken. 

Taken aback, Toni stares at them as they stare at her. 

Oh. Maybe NOT Larpers. Even they have standards of hygiene.

The tallest of the group, who is still about an inch shorter than her own height, starts forward, speaking...something. Toni steps back, eyeing him as his lips curl into a wide smile. That is not a nice smile. 

“Yeah, so if you could point me to the nearest city, bus terminal, somewhere that isn’t here.”

The man steps closer, one hand snaking out to grab her arm, before turning to speak to his friends. 

“Hey, don’t fucking touch me.” Toni snaps, and yanks away from him, startling a yell from one of the other men who brandishes his sword again.

The ringleader steps closer again, snapping something at the man who’d yelled, his hand once more grabbing her arm.

“I said, DON’T touch me.” She snarls as she jerks her arm from his hold once more, drawing a hiss from the man and a chorus of laughter from his friends.

A split second, a sharply snapped word, and an abrupt stinging pain bursts across her cheek, her head snapping to the side as the man slaps her hard enough to send speckles of light across her vision. A very stunned Toni finds herself dragged to the side, staggering farther onto the path as few of them laugh at her expression. 

Stunned at the violence she’d just been shown, Toni doesn’t even notice the hands tugging at her clothing, the laughing voices as they examine her. The moment someone touches her backpack, however, hard hands tugging at the straps, she snaps from her stunned haze, and sends a hard elbow into the solar plexus of the man behind her. 

The man staggers back with a loud yelp, Toni taking advantage of his distraction to step into his personal bubble, one fist coming up to guard her face, the other curling up into a haymaker, right to the grabby bastard’s jaw. Like a sack of potatoes, or a loud slappy twit with a glass jaw, the man drops outright as she bounces back, fists up and ready, mouth spitting curses even as she dances away.

Caution is the better part of valor as the rest of the idiot troupe brandish their swords, bellowing at the assault to their ‘leader’ and Toni makes a tactical retreat, bolting as far and a fast away as possible, ignoring the yells and footfalls sounding behind her. 

“Fuck you all!” She yells behind her, settling easily into the ground eating stride she used to use while competing, her breath automatically settling into the rhythm she’d been trained to maintain for so many years. Maybe a little out of shape now, but still better than the idiots she’d just encountered.

The voices behind her fade quickly, and unfortunately so does the light. It isn’t long that Toni finds herself following the path in near black, the moon her only light source...until a faint glimmering flares a short distance away, an unsteady light that draws her eyes, and makes her steady footfalls slow, and eventually stop. 

Frowning, hazel eyes narrow and she slowly shakes her head at what can only be a distant campfire, absently glancing back at the road she’d left behind before huffing to herself.

“Not happening.”

Turning away from the bright glimmer in the deepening twilight, she heads to the closest tree with heavy branches. She’d slept in them before. Fallen out of them while sleeping too, but better being tied to a branch than sleeping on the ground and being eaten by gods knows what.


	4. Journal Entry Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning that any snippets from Westron or any other languages will be very brief, and I definitely don't claim any great knowledge of them!

_Journal Entry Two - Squirrels are assholes, and Old Men are Creepers._

So. Day two of my epic journey into the land of people with bad teeth, rolling green hills and bird song.

Sleeping in the tree was less easy than I expected and had experienced before, considering I had nothing to tie myself to the branch with aside from my own pants. Which yeah, Not happening. I ended up nearly dying twice (I conveniently forgot how much of a restless sleeper I am) until I’d abandoned my first choice, and found another with a huge old gnarly bowl where three massive branches came out. I can‘t say it was a good sleep, since I had to curl myself into a cramped ball to fit, and it was cold as balls once the sun had gone down, but at least I didn’t get eaten by anything.

Morning is cold. Dewy, and filled with squirrels deciding that I definitely didn’t belong, and the little assholes pelted me with chunks of leaves and twigs until I’d scrambled down from my spot. 

I have no idea what time it is. Its bright enough to be maybe eight or nine am, but without some sort of electronic device to spit that information back at me, I’m clueless. The nearest I can say is that isn’t noon, since the sun isn’t straight up.

I need to start walking. I’m hungry, and my stomach hurts. I’m probably dehydrated. Maybe if I keep following the cart path, I’ll come across someone else. Hopefully someone that is less of a jackass than the group I ran into yesterday. 

Asskickings are free to the next people who try to touch me in any way, shape or form.

(A little drawing sits in the middle, a little scribbly, but it is a reasonable drawing of the tree Toni had slept in, complete with Angry Squirrels One and Two on a high branch.)

~

_Sidenote 1:_

An old man popped out of nowhere when I was taking a piss. I panicked, and threw the clump of leaves in my hand at his head.

I have no idea if he got hit or not, because I was too busy slipping on a mushroom the size of a dinner plate, and whacking my head on a low branch.

Now I have a headache, a huge bruise on my forehead, and a very confused elderly man with a pointy hat muttering things at me in a language that I definitely don’t recognize, but is suspiciously similar, but NOT the same as the one the morons had been speaking yesterday. He’d even tried to touch my face after I’d hurt myself, and got a slap on the wrist for it. 

Definitely an indignant old man now.

I have piss on my shoes. My sock is wet and smells disgusting.

Once I figure out what the fuck he’s saying, I’m going to tell him where he can shove the walking stick he’s carrying after he tells me where the hell I am.

~

_Sidenote 2:_

I must be concussed. I have to be.

Of all the muttered words the old man has given me, I recognized one of them. Just one.

_Arda._

The old man had frowned, and pointed down, and had said it again, pointing at the earth, his gestures had been emphatic, his eyes had crinkled and his face creased behind his huge beard. 

I think he’s confused as I am, which is saying something.

Even now, he’s trying again. Gesturing down, pointing, and saying slowly. 

_“Arda. Sôval phârë? Adûni?”_

What the fuck is going on and why do I recognize that word?


End file.
